


the slowest spark is a breather

by scrunch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Artificial Intelligence, Cyberpunk, F/F, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, content warning for slight gendered/possibly ableist slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1123893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrunch/pseuds/scrunch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cyberpunk AU: vigilante hacker babe Roxy Lalonde and her crew's cyberwar against the regime of Her Imperious Condescension hinges on the recovery of a vital asset from under her fishy claws. Naturally, it all goes to shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rogue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassowarykisses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassowarykisses/gifts).



> Disclaimer for this work: I am not a writer. I am actually a fanartist who made the incredibly stupid mistake of leaving her tablet pen behind when going home for the holidays, and ended up having to write this 13k+ fic in a little over a week. I suppose there is a first time for everything! To my recipient -- I hope I did your excellent prompt some sort of justice.

Two in the motherfuckin’ A-M – that’s three clicks off curfew and straight on ‘til morning for all the night owls still chasing lines of code down the proverbial leporine warren. As Roxy Lalonde, wizard enthusiast and vigilante hacker extraordinaire, you are unfortunately one of the suckers out tearing down the town with your **SWEET SKILLZ** and **MAD HAXX** stone-cold sober instead of snuggled up in your bed with a nightcap beating your highscore on _Super Pikmin 4D: Culling Fields_. 

TT: Kick it into gear, Kitty. You’re all clear.

Regardless, you’re feeling pretty damn skippy tonight, to be off-the-fuckin’-chain candid. Your favourite WANTED poster was in the morning papers again today, slipped between SPORTS NEWS and the daily crossword; it’s the one where you all posed for a security camera after the Party Rainbow Chip Affair with one arm slung around your bestie and the other flipping the bird. You didn’t read the associated article because that would be textbook fuckin’ narcissism as your irascible palemate would say, but you figure it went a lil’ somethin’ like this:

**The Notorious Hacker Clique the 'Bad City Darlings' remain At Large and Hella Bangin’:  
Saucy Ringer Minx Roxy Lalonde voted the Hottest and Most Eligible Hacker Bitch in Town for a Second Year Running**

You did, however, skim the horoscopes before said diamonds buddy nabbed it to do Troll Sudoku (in which the numbers are additionally hemocoded to add an entirely unnecessary dimension of difficulty) and paraphrased them to your convenience. Hang in there, Aries! Sagittarius is on the case, and Scorpio and Libra ain’t holding back. Pisces – you may want to keep a weather eye. Gristmas is coming early this year, and you’ll be up to your gills in candycoal.

TG: it would seem 2nite is perfect weather for fishin, cap ;)

The Crockercorp Industries’ flagship candy factory, where you are currently situated, is going to be your biggest job yet. This isn’t some low-level frosting facility or moist cake mix plant, this is Gusher City Central; the only thing more transparent than this place being a cover for a special operations coordination hub for the Big Fish Herself (may her skin forever dry out in the fuckin’ sun) is probably the fancy-ass organic corn-fed free range seawater she keeps in her spaceship, and the amount of boondollars laundered from hard-working taxpaying citizenslaves to pay for it. 

TT: Really though, you might want to hurry it up.  
TT: In the most cliché and predictable sense, I have a “bad feeling” about this.

This joint ain’t an easy gobstopper to crack, but it doesn’t take many licks to get to the centre; in fact, you and your team found it almost too easy to clear out the grunts and secure the area. 

TG: shoooooosh mr tightass extraordinaire  
TG: ill b done so lickity split u wont even have time 2 finish ur bitchin b4 i digitally flashstep the data into ur dumb anime shades ;)

Things were bound to go sour.

uranianUmbra [UU] performed action **C://CROCKHUB/OPEN COMM.PRIVATE** with tipsyGnostalgic  [TG] at 02:34.

UU: Um, excUse me.  
UU: this is my tUrf.  
UU: i was here first, so please kindly bUtt oUt!! ^u^

Your frenetically tapping fingers pause on the holographic terraware typepad you’ve rigged to the side of the giant server – which takes up half of the room you’re doing indescribably illegal things in – and you squint at the little grey pixels floating on the screen in front of you, all the while feeling slightly bemused. Two hours into the heist and a solid twenty minutes spent wriggling your way into the tight layers of security wrapped around the information you’re trying to steal from this drive, and not a peep. Nada. The figurative viewing gallery has been quiet as the grave this whole time, mostly due to your spiky-haired bodyguard taking any potential viewers in the vicinity out in one fell swoop. And only now does someone decide to crawl out of the woodwork to try and fuck you over, breaking the sweet streak of milestones you’ve been smashing as you continue to crack this firewall. Just your luck.

Oh well. Where one door closes, another opens. And then subsequently closes again, with one of your scarves tied loosely around the handle.

TG: well well WELL  
TG: i must say im hells of impressed that u got into the system w/o us findin u  
TG: where r u hidin, mystery babe?  
TG: id love 2 pay u a visit!

You’re no stranger to competitors who don’t fancy the cut of your jib. In fact, you’re alarmingly intimate with several of them. According to popular belief, this may or may not have facilitated the union between the previously independent Scourge Sisters and Alphabeats, but a certain Serket will vehemently deny it ever happened. Speaking of your friendly neighborhood spidertroll, you type a couple of commands and flick open a chat to your mobile server.

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] performed action **C://BADCITY/OPEN COMM.PRIVATE** with arachnidsGrip  [AG] at 02:38.

TG: heeeyyyyyy spidey, we got a lil bug trapped in our jar here  
TG: see if u cant catch it in ur web ;)

Tabbing out of the chat, you attempt to go back to your task at hand. But the little grey intruder keeps flashing up in front of the code you’re trying to hack, so with a sigh you bring up the log and see how this latest hotshot is going to proposition you in order to convince you to keep out of their ‘tUrf’.

VIEW CHATLOG: uranianUmbra  [UU]  
UU: well toUgh lUck, becaUse yoU can’t!  
UU: there’s no way a hacker with skills as shoddy as yours as coUld ever track me down UuU  
UU: so i’m warning yoU right now to stay away!  
UU: hey! don’t ignore me!!  
UU: stop all of yoUr hacking right this instant yoUng lady!  
TG: ok u have my attention  
TG: but only briefly bc im doin much more important things than u rn  
TG: and i mean that both ways ;)  
TG: firstly i dont believe i have disclosed my gender 2 u so idk why ur auto assumin im female

Before you can continue, another notification pops up, this time layered in orange code over your optics. You feel a headache coming on.

VIEW CHATLOG: timaeusTestified  [TT]  
TT: What’s the holdup?  
TT: I can see you over there grinding your teeth over something.  
TT: You need an assist?  
TG: a slight hiccup its all g  
TG: i got spider workin on it

VIEW CHATLOG: arachnidsGrip  [AG]  
TG: uh u kno anytime 2day would b gr8 spider  [ERROR: NOT DELIVERED]

VIEW CHATLOG: uranianUmbra  [UU]  
UU: there are many things i know about yoU!  
UU: like the fact that yoU are GOING DOWN!!!  
TG: lol k  
TG: who r u anyway  
TG: doesnt seem v fair that u APPARENTLY kno so much abt me and i kno jack shit abt u  
UU: i’m jUst a lady on the job, same as yoU  
UU: this information is a pretty valUable prize for any accomplished hacker!  
UU: yoU and yoUr team aren’t the only groUp interested in these codes ~u^

VIEW CHATLOG: timaeusTestified  [TT]  
TG: just uh hypothetically n all, could it b possible that we missed someone when we cleared this place out  
TT: Kitty.   
TT: Is there someone else hijacking the drive?  
TG: there miiiiiiiight b  
TG: but look dw about it ive got everythin under control  
TG: stay over there and keep watch aight

VIEW CHATLOG: arachnidsGrip  [AG]  
TG: come onnnnnnnnn cap is gettin antsy  [ERROR: NOT DELIVERED]

VIEW CHATLOG: uranianUmbra  [UU]  
TG: debatable, considerin v few ppl even kno this drive exists  
TG: let alone what it contains  
TG: so if i had to take a stab in the dark id say a certain someone is spreadin some fibs  
TG: to make up for the fact that they are totes stalkin me  
TG: bc they have a BIG FAT BLACK CRUSH on me  
TG: does that sound like someone u kno ;)  
UU: NO!!!!!  
UU: that’s not  
UU: i don’t  
UU: look, yoU’ve got the completely wrong end of the stick here!!  
TG: have i now  
UU: i’m here for these codes and nothing else!  
UU: rest assUred, nothing between heaven and earth will distract me from my goal  
UU: that’s why yoU shoUld leave while i’m feeling benevolent enoUgh to allow it!   
TG: pft gimme a break  
TG: the only folks who can best me r up at skaianet  
TG: and i kno ur not one of them bc their servers have been down 4 like 6 months now  
TG: ALSO they wouldnt b competin against me like a big jerkwad bc any self respectin citslave wants to bring the condesce to her witchy knees  
TG: anyway, stop tryin 2 stall me  
TG: im takin these codes and ur not stopping me  
TG: theres nothing u can throw at me that i cant send back w fierce and swift retribution  
TG: the only reason i havent locked u out already is bc i like a challenge >:D  
UU: oh wow, really?  
UU: i am glad yoU find me challenging enoUgh to keep aroUnd!  
UU: even thoUgh we have a conflict of interest, i think it woUld be lovely if we coUld become friends! ^u^  
UU: i mean   
UU: HATEfriends.   
UU: yeah!  
UU: becaUse yoU are my rival and i won’t let yoU get anywhere near these codes if i can help it!  
TG: wait whut

VIEW CHATLOG: arachnidsGrip  [AG]  
TG: ugh srsly is the feed fuckin up AGAIN what is this bs [ERROR: NOT DELIVERED]

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] performed action >>PING C://BADCITY.413.61.2.888  
Messages sent to this user cannot be received because arachnidsGrip [AG]’s computer exploded!

TG: well fuck.

Messages sent to this user cannot be received because tipsyGnostalgic [TG] is offline!


	2. The Thief

Two AM, three hours past the time when humans are meant to go the fuck to bed or get shot in the streets or something, and while the wondertwins get to kick ass and take names down on the factory floor, you’re cramped up in a busted old scuttlebutt clinging to the side of some shitheap hiveblock across the road, broadcasting the narrow-band signal from your mobile server to the hacking squad below. 

Your name is Vriska Serket, incredibly gifted and ridiculously good-looking sequence analyst, and the whole city could be going up in flames and you’d have no idea because the entire front viewport of your ship is taken up by lines and lines of code. You wish sometimes that you weren’t so good at monitoring the SHIT out of some fucking feeds so that your team leader would let you off the chain once in a while.

Fortunately, your matesprit is stationed on watch on the roof of the facility, and is likely just as bored out of her fucking sponge as you are. 

arachnidsGrip [AG] performed action C://BADCITY/OPEN COMM.PRIVATE with gallowsCalibrator [GC] at 02:30.

AG: Hey, Justice, how’s it looking out front?  
GC: 4LL CL34R!   
AG: 8ecause it’s looking fine as hell out 8ack :::;)  
GC: 1M 3N ROUT3 TO SURV3Y TH3 L  
GC: OH MY GOD  
GC: W4S TH4T S3R1OUSLY  
GC: TH4T W4S TH3 L4M3ST L1N3 1V3 3V3R H34RD  
AG: Hey!!!!!!!!  
GC: TH4NK GOD YOUR3 PR3TTY  
GC: NOW G3T B4CK TO WORK >:]

gallowsCalibrator [GC] has closed the chat on C://BADCITY.413.61.2.888.

So fucking much for that. You let out a long groan, appropriate enough to communicate your intense dissatisfaction at your current set of circumstances, and slump your cheek further into the knuckles of your closed fist. From what you can tell of the feeds, Roxy is probably 67% done with the second layer of security on the drive and seems to be taking a straight-on approach to the main firewall; choosing to blast right through the middle rather than trying to sneak around. She’s in a no-bullshit mood this evening, and privately you can admit that you admire her style.

It’s when she clears the second security level and focuses her efforts on widening the chunks she’s taken out of the firewall so she can punch through that you pick up something odd in the output stream. You double-check the sequence and raise an eyebrow – that can’t be a second user in the system, can it? What the fuck, there totally is. Who’s this douchebag? You’re about to flick a message to Roxy asking about it, but she ends up beating you to it.

tipsyGnostalgic [TG] performed action C://BADCITY/OPEN COMM.PRIVATE with arachnidsGrip [AG] at 02:38.

TG: heeeyyyyyy spidey, we got a lil bug trapped in our jar here  
TG: see if u cant catch it in ur web ;)

Finally, some action! Not that sitting around in the good ship Herbert decrypting Roxy’s sloppy seconds isn’t the HEIGHT of entertainment, but you appreciate getting to do something other than scrolling all damn night. And getting to wreck someone’s shit will surely make up for this entire tedious affair.

Flexing your fingers in your touchtype gloves, you whip up Roxy’s output feed and stack its elements, selecting the chat data from the pile before collapsing the stack back into the raw feed. Even without the snarled mess that is the combined data stream, the chat feed is still littered with junk code and false leads – defensive tactics you employ to make it difficult for anyone spying on your feeds to make any sense of it. Even for anyone on your team, it would still take a few minutes of running a cipher program to be remotely comprehensible; however, you don’t need to bother with any of that boring junk. You’ve got something FAR better.

In your younger and more reckless days, you had a messy breakup that resulted in you losing your left arm and eye. It also resulted in Terezi’s blinding, your ex being crippled and at least one death from collateral damage; but that kind of shit is practically mundane in troll dating. You generally just tell people you fought a mutant shark, or something equivalently badass. In any event, you bullied your sweaty pervert neighbour into making you bionic prosthetics, and the results were definitely worth the moist and trembling consultations at his creepy hive. You emerged a new troll: fitted with an arm strong enough to crush skulls and open the fuck out of a pickle jar, and your pride and joy – your roboptic eightfold. An optical implant that allows you to see through defensive masking code right to the meaty centre of a feed, and stylish as fuck to boot. 

With your right ganderbulb shut tight, you peer through the eight lenses of your roboptic at Roxy’s chat feed and the pink and grey text of her mystery conversation immediately comes into sharp focus. From the quirk, you guess the perpetrator is a hemononymous troll, but… holy shit, are they hitting on her? Weeeeeeeeak! Their blackflirting is so clumsy and downright laughable that you downgrade them from Bullshit Wimpy Troll to Bullshit Wimpy Troll, Pail-less Forever. If they’re trying to hit it off with Roxy, they’ve got a fat fucking chance in hell sporting that kind of repartee. Not that you’ve ever had experience in that area, or anything. Just as an objective observer.

uranianUmbra [UU] performed action C://CROCKHUB/COMM.LINK TO SOURCE.BADCITY.413.61.2.888  
uranianUmbra [UU] performed action C://BADCITY/OPEN COMM.PRIVATE with arachnidsGrip [AG] at 02:40.

UU: don’t yoU know it is rUde to eavesdrop on private conversations??

You’re momentarily taken aback at this jackoff somehow managing to reach your servers, but then you realise how excellent an opportunity this is. This is your lucky night! You relish in the sick burns you are going to lay down on this fool before shutting them the fuck down and delivering their smoking carcass to Lalonde on a silver platter, engraved with your winking face and emblazoned in gold filigree with YOU’RE WELCOME.

AG: Jumping onto our priv8 feed from your own via the Crockercorp hu8, that’s pretty clever.  
AG: Hahahahahahahaha just kidding, it’s lame as fuck!  
AG: Nearly as weak as your pitching game. Even gru8s could deal 8etter sp8des!  
AG: In fact, I’m coming off more caliginous in this little chat than you’ve 8een this entire time.  
AG: And frankly, amateurs like you aren’t even my type. >:::)

You high five your normal arm with your bionic one. Man, you fucking _owned_ them. You went right to the store, slammed down a stack of boonies, and told the cashier to keep the motherfucking change.

UU: i woUld jUst like to speak to TG without yoU nosying into matters that do not concern yoU.  
UU: if yoU do not comply i will be forced to take action!! ÙnÚ  
AG: Oh yeah? What are you going to do a8out it????????  
AG: Yeah, that’s what I thought.  
AG: You’re pathetic! I dare you to even try to get past me. In fact, I’ll give you a head start!  
AG: You get 8 seconds 8efore I call your 8luff and send you right 8ack to the sewer of mediocrity you’ve somehow managed to crawl out of.

Of course, you have no intention of giving this upstart any kind of advantage. This time is only for your tracer program to complete, so you can pinpoint their location and then take control of their mind utilising your innate telepathic powers that are your hatchright as a Serket. Maybe you'll even make them do a silly dance out front for your amusement, so that your teammates have extra time to make their escape after successfully ripping the codes right out from under the Condesce’s fishy nose. As always, you will be the hero. It’s you.

A notif pops up letting you know the tracer has delivered the culprit right into your claws with five seconds on your imposed countdown to go. The lat-long figure is oddly familiar, and you realise with an uneasy kind of jolt that it’s the same set of digits you have tagged as **KITTY** and **CAP**. 

Three seconds is more than enough time to psychically scan the room. You brush Roxy’s mind, humming with numbers as she bores deeper into the crack she’s made in Crockercorp’s firewall, and Dirk’s mind, calm and focused on detecting any movement outside the room, and even the sparks of barely conscious troll thugs slumped around the perimeter, but even as you scour the room you can sense no other minds within range. You frown. Was the tracer calibrated right?

UU: hello? are yoU still interested in calling my blUff? :U

Oh, yeah, eight seconds is up. Time always seems to go faster when it’s in seconds. What the fuck ever, maybe UU is a particularly dull human appropriating troll quirk culture. You’ve always had difficulty touching and controlling human brains you haven’t been previously exposed to. Anyway, they’ve got access to a computer of some sort, so you prepare a nasty little program that’ll bounce straight off Crockercorp’s firewall and slam dunk right into the access feed they’re using to tap into it. God, you’re so fucking great.

UU: ohhhh no, i woUldn’t do that if i were yoU!

You ignore UU’s pathetic cries for mercy. Tough shit, you offered your sincere clemency and it was rudely refused. You wish you could see their face when your virus blows it right the fuck up.

UU: oh boy, this is not going to end well at all UnU

It didn’t.

As you sail through the air alongside the remains of your scuttlebutt to the caterwauling of alarms below, you consider that there is a slight chance you’ve made a huge mistake.

“Ooh, Miss Serket,” Terezi cackles, shrieking above the wind as she swoops in for the catch. “How nice of you to drop in!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	3. The Seer

\-- excerpt of bad city surveillance log at 0300 – 0400 from userID: carcinoGeneticist \--

SYSTEM UPDATE.0304: RECEIVED MOBILE TRANSMISSION OF ESSENTIAL MISSION DATA FOR MISSION:CANDY CRUSH. DATA IS BEING PROCESSED BY SERVER II.  
SYSTEM UPDATE.0307: DATA HAS BEEN FULLY PROCESSED BY SERVER II. PENDING TRANSMISSION OF DATA FROM TROLLWARE TO TERRAWARE SERVERS.  
SYSTEM UPDATE.0319: DATA FROM MISSION:CANDY CRUSH SUCCESSFULLY BACKED UP TO BAD CITY TERRAWARE.  
SCHEDULED SYSTEM CHECK.0330: ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONING NORMALLY. SERVER II IS OFFLINE AND RECUPERATING AFTER DATA TRANSFFFGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHH [ERROR: CHARACTER LIMIT FOR ENTRY REACHED]  
SCHEDULED SYSTEM CHECK.0400: HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHASKIDNJSISUDNFIURENFWnkjnsakcfune984983r

“I’M AWAKE!!! I’M AWAKE GET YOUR TONGUE OUT OF MY AURICULAR SPONGE CLOT OR I SWEAR TO THE GODDAMN SEA WITCH I WILL FUCKING STRANGLE YOU WITH YOUR STUPID FUCKING DRAGON ONESIE. DO NOT TEST MY RESOLVE, IT IS TEMPERED IN THE FIRES OF MY HATRED FOR EVERYONE IN THIS UNDERGROUND SHITHEAP AND IS CONSEQUENTLY HONED TO A POINT THAT WOULD PROBABLY MAKE STRIDER CRY HIS FUCKING LOOKSTUBS OUT. REMOVE. YOUR. TONGUE.” 

You are not, however, userID: carcinoGeneticist at this moment in time. You are actually Terezi Pyrope, dispenser of **GR34T JUST1C3** via the medium of epic cane drubbings, and you take immense enjoyment in getting under aforementioned tech support troll’s skin. Literally. He just tastes so cute when he’s angry – like a sour little crabapple. 

After swooping in with your sweet rocket wings to save your darling damsel in distress, who was thrown from the smoking carcass of the command shuttle in a graceful, flailing arc right into your strong yet gentle arms (PSWOOOOP, more like _pswoooon_ ) you made your draconian way back to your shithole of a hive. Getting the information on the series of events that led to the unfortunate loss of your team’s only ride with an actual roof didn’t fail to be a highly stimulating experience – especially when the interrogation concerned said darling damsel, and was additionally conducted while airborne. It is in your expert opinion as a (prospective) legislacerator that all evidence in a trial should be given during **3XTR3M3 C1RCUMST4NC3S** , as it promotes both honest and generally concise statements, and naturally a jury would be inclined to favour a representative of the cruellest bar who added a bit of entertainment to the proceedings. 

Speaking of which – Vriska is a very fragrant patch of badly burnt blueberry pie stalking around the room. It is a tragically beautiful moment when she viciously yanks off the charred remnants of her cool leather jacket – which she claims she won after fighting an entire hovercycle gang with only half a bottle of whiskey she snatched off a bum, but you know was actually purchased for quite a steep fee from a punk couture boutique off 7th and Violet – and slam-dunks it into the waste chute. She then proceeds to dump the rest of her clothes onto Karkat. 

“Vriska, what the FUCK?” Karkat says in a strangled voice, which is slightly muffled by what you presume are Vriska’s cute dice-patterned GET LUCKY panties. You consider that the placement of this garment may also contribute to the slight strangulation evident in his tone. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you _offended_ by my body, Vantas????????” she shrieks. From what you can smell of the situation, she’s completely naked and still quite sooty. “Would it be more convenient for you if I just hung out in my chemical-soaked rags until my bulge shrivels up and drops off? Would that make you feel better about looking like you left half your pathetic torso in the cocoon when you pupated?” 

Karkat turns his little cherry orbs towards you, very pointedly ignoring your screeching matesprit, and bunching a hand in your charge suit, hisses, “Terezi. Please, for the love of – I will clean out your recuperacoon for a month.” 

You chew over his proposal, and present a counteroffer. “Two, and Vriska’s as well.” 

“…I could have DIED tonight, while you laid around here like a lazy fucking lump and drooled all over the terraware! And now you have the AUDACITY to… ” 

“Oh my fucking god,” Karkat says. “Done.” 

Just beyond the range of your keen nose, you sense Vriska shoot you a saucy wink without pausing her litany of outrage. There’s something to be said about successfully driving a hard bargain, and that something is that Karkat Vantas is probably the best intern you’ve ever had, and by far the cutest. 

You decide the time has come to end the little performance, though you are loathe to cut short the fun you’re all having. You approach Vriska and gently take her hands. “While it was very amusing to watch you scream and writhe around in the air like a cute little wiggler in the culling fields, I will not hesitate to destroy UU if I ever catch a whiff of their crumbly grey code again,” you positively coo. “And then, I will pronounce to the world that my vengeance was but a trifle in the eyes of your noble sacrifice, and, as the hero of the day, you can sweep me into your strong arms and ravish me like Troll Fabio.” You can’t quite make out Vriska’s good eye rolling dourly in her socket, but you can make out her mouth quirk into a vicious little grin, due to the fact that you are now tracing it with your tongue. 

“I’d drown myself in spoor slime just to unsee this,” you hear Karkat mutter rather unsubtly. 

“Rude!!!!!!!!” Vriska says. “For that, you should get three months.” 

“Go put on some clothes, Serket,” you tell her. “I find the defendant in contempt on the grounds of being boorish and nubby! As my star witness, I motion that you should continue to make your case in private, at a more convenient time.” Karkat vocalises an interesting 2x wretchgagging combo in the background, so you make sure to slap Vriska’s rump within his field of vision and then continue to admire its severe angles as she attempts a seductive walk to your shared pod. 

“I will not prosecute you for your indiscretions tonight, but only because you are incredibly adorable when you’re all tuckered out in your own strawberry spittle,” you advise Karkat. “Now go and get Server II up and running before the humans get back.” You then also slap his rump, causing him to let out a scandalised yelp as he scurries out of the room, because why stop while you’re ahead. 

Now briefly alone in the main atrium, you finally slip off your helmet and shake out your sweaty hair, which is quickly drying stiff and spiky, before gently massaging the base of your horns. Bluh! Regardless of your capability to find humour in the situation, there is no doubt that this heist did not go well. There is nothing more irrefutable than that fact, except perhaps the verdict that will place a well-earned noose around a certain fuchsia neck. Case in point: Roxy and Dirk would have absconded immediately once Vriska’s mishap alerted the authorities, which likely means the data you all need is still locked up tight. However, Roxy would not risk Her Imperious Condescension – may her horns be ever tangled in a net – bulking up the security detail on the factory and ensuring it nigh-on impossible to attempt to access the codes a second time. This information is far too important to the team, but especially for her, to give up. No – in true Lalonde fashion, she’ll have ripped the drive out of its casings and be cradling it in her arms like a lost meowbeast all the way home. Which brings your thought process to its natural and foregone conclusion: as per usual, it is going to be a long night. 

“There better be an excellent fucking reason you’re dragging me out of my recuperacoon when I’m not scheduled to be online for another six hours,” you hear Sollux lisp sourly. As he steps into the atrium from across the room with Karkat and Vriska in tow you can smell the strong aroma of coffee, a human vice he’s wholeheartedly embraced, dosed with an overly generous amount of honey. “My circadian clock is royally fucked up the ass with these daylight shifts I’ve been put on to charge up the mobile server without taking chunks out of my night respite bracket too. Who the fuck ever heard of a troll sleeping at night whose thinkpan isn’t already fried into grub jerky?” 

“Don’t you say a fucking thing, Serket,” Karkat growls. Vriska, now garbed magnificently in hot pants under one of your KOMODO QUEST band tees and slinging her robotic arm languidly around your shoulders, makes an innocent motion with the other. “Not one grubfucking word. Close your pointy mouth and try your hardest to impale your tongue on your fangs so our dysfunctional gang of nookwrecked fucksponges can at least experience a modicum of joy in our miserable shitty lives.” 

“Ehehe, you passed out again, didn’t you KK?” Sollux says, passing his mug to you as he makes his way to the trollware amplification terminal. You appreciate the gesture, immediately draining the remainder of the bitter, cloying beverage down your protein chute and smacking your seedflap together loudly in satisfaction. Your resident psionic nerdlord doth protest exceedingly, but he’s processed the mission data and knows as well as you do the inevitable task that is about to take place, and you’re both going to need energy for it. “You fuckin’ nubskull. Go shave off your horns if you’re going to be all human about your weird naps.” 

“Shove some fucking bees up your nook, asshole,” is his sour little crabapple retort. “When and where I rest my aching optic spheres after staring at lines of pan-numbing code for hours on end shouldn’t have to be a federal fucking issue.” 

The bickering between your fellow troll members of said aptly described ‘dysfunctional gang of nookwrecked fucksponges’ is temporarily shelved by the exterior hatch groaning open. “Oh, great, the gang’s all here!” your fearless leader says cheerfully, dragging her human companion out of the access shaft as he dismantles the hoverboard they’ve flown in on. As you predicted, there’s a foreign object that smells faintly of gushers nestled amongst the array of her gear. “Hey Sol, be a babe and go jump into the tentacles. Get real comfy. Burrow right into that slimy goodness.” 

“Do a flip,” Vriska adds. Sollux acquiesces by flipping her off. 

“Karkat, set up the SBURB sequence.” Roxy continues. “Vriska, you’re on feeds with Dirk, and Terezi, you’re with me. We’re extending the fishing trip a lil’ bit. There ain’t no rest for the wicked!” 


	4. The Prince

There’s something to be said about flying through the city on a hoverboard with highly illegal contraband secreted on your person after breaking into a high security government facility post-curfew, and that something is that it really does a number on your hair.

Your name is Dirk Strider – allware engineer, occasional mechanic, and flashstepping bodyguard with an unbreakable katana and a licence to kill, as long as you have a licenced killer of at least two years in the front seat with you if you’re bringing passengers along for the ride. But if you’re the steel of the Bad City Darlings, your sparkplug moirail is the heart. And she sure as hell knows it.

“Are you sure about this?” you murmur to her. It’s been a long fuckin’ night, and all you really want is to take one of your legendary infinite showers (twenty minutes is apparently a duration that eclipses the confines of time and space itself, and in that time the water never begins to flow nor ceases – it was already here) and then let your insomnia put you into a half-conscious haze for a few hours. And you know Roxy needs the rest, too - she hasn’t been sleeping well either lately. It’s hard to reconcile nightmares that are sunk deep in reality, and you don’t think she’s ready to face them just yet.

That’s generally the kind of excuse you make to yourself, because you and denial have been bosom buddies long after you stopped breastfeeding. ‘Wait for the opportune moment, we have to be careful, take it slow’, et cetera, ad infinitum… the truth is, she’s determined, resourceful, and absolutely capable of handling anything thrown at her with adroit grace. You just worry about her. About her stretching herself too thin too fast, chasing demons into the underworld without thinking about them biting back.

“It’s alright to admit defeat and save the battle for another day, you know,” you continue, while she unpacks her body tech. It’s a foregone conclusion, because she’s stubborn at the best and worst of times, but you feel obligated to yourself to at least try. “There are a lot of other avenues we can explore that don’t involve SBURB–”

“God, Di-Stri, you’re like a stuck record tonight,” Roxy cuts in, pressing a grubgum pink nail to your lips to shoosh you affectionately. “We’ve only discussed this like a zillion times in the last half hour, but I pretty much made an executive fuckin’ CEO level decision on the matter when I ripped this baby right out of that bigass server. I mean, there isn’t exactly a return policy on this thing.” She grins, waving around the Crockercorp drive – a little worse for the wear from the rough treatment its endured en-route – and plonks it solidly into your palms. “Get it set up. We don’t know if there’s a tracer in here or not, so we gotta get the info quick-smart and then send it for a little dip in the river.”

“You’re in an oddly good mood,” you observe as you hook the drive up to the amplification terminal for your trollware server – where said server is currently ensconcing himself in its thick, muscle-like fibres – and run a few connection tests. “I mean, considering the circumstances. Losing the scuttle is one thing, but getting a new mobile server is going to be a pain in the ass.”

“Well, hey, we’re all out of options and everything sucks,” she replies, tucking her head over your shoulder as you work. “But everything is only as shitty as you make it. I may as well own it!” She hums her approval at your setup, and then hoists herself up onto one of the submersion platforms adjacent to the terminal with a soft _hup!_ “You should try taking that stick out of your ass sometime and lookin’ on the bright side for a change,” she teases. “It might even be fun!” When you shoot her an unamused glare, she appraises you with a lopsided smile and stretches her arms above her head. “Plug me in?”

The Simulated Brainwave Ultrareality Biodrive, known in tech circles as SBURB, works on the principle of utilising the full computational power of a brain and applying it to a complex problem – such as a highly encrypted set of codes – that are too difficult to be consciously solved using mere surface brain function. The subject perceives the problem as a visual construct, usually some form of maze, in which their conscious mind navigates within a feedback loop from the subconscious mind, which works simultaneously to crack the code. It’s borne from the ingenious partnership of trollware and terraware – the biodrive used to manipulate the subject’s brain is powered by a psionic-capable troll or lusus naturae, which then connects to inorganic hardware that facilitates the complete immersion into the data grid via a spinal integrated matrix. All of the Darlings have built-in SIM anchors not only for this purpose, but for the added bonus of charging your tech using your body’s own metabolic and kinetic energy on the go. And the sheer amount of running, jumping and tense, incessant snacking which tends to come with the territory of being guerrilla hacker geniuses trying to undermine a corrupt regime makes having sheets of metal embedded in your back worth it many times over.

You affix the heavy cables to Roxy’s SIM dock, while she lays back and makes herself comfortable on the slightly scuffed leather upholstery of her platform pod. On her other side, Vriska has come over to help plug in Terezi, and has somehow gotten a cable tangled in one of her horns, much to Karkat’s despair and Terezi’s fond chagrin. Roxy’s doing some final calibrations on her optics, so you bump your knuckles against her fist like the smooth palemantic motherfucker you are and go bring up her and Terezi’s feeds on their respective terminals.

“Okay, I’m ready to power up,” Sollux says. “One of you nookstains better have some human caffeine drink brewed up when this is over or I am going to quit this shit for good.”

“Aw, doublenubs, you love us too much to even consider making good on that tired old threat,” Vriska replies, wiping some of Terezi’s pale teal saliva off of her face.

“Blow me.”

“They’re both good to go,” you tell Karkat, who has the dubious honour of manning the main feed. While you and Vriska check Roxy and Terezi’s progress individually, Karkat has to deal with the clusterfuck that is all of the data from the decryption combined. Luckily, the kid is so gravely and overzealously dedicated to his job he considers it a big responsibility. You then turn to the machine in front of you.

Once you hit the novelty-sized and beautifully tacky DROP button, Sollux’s psionic energy will flood into the Crockercorp drive via the SBURB terraware and activate the loop program. Roxy and Terezi will start decrypting the code and will likely have the coordinates you all need within the hour, and you will all be one major step of the way towards dealing a major blow to the Condesce. Still, you hesitate. The trepidation you’ve had about this operation since the start has never really left you, and as you flick open the cap, you wonder if you’re making a huge mistake.

“Yo, Dirk, one more thing!” Roxy calls out, as your finger hovers over the button. You walk over, but when you reach her platform she beckons you in closer. Frowning, you lean in. “Check up on Vriska,” she hisses, her hot breath tickling the curve of your ear. “You might need to replace some parts of her prosthetics if they’ve got too much burn damage.”

“Love you too, babe,” you deadpan, and she rolls her eyes.

“Get back to the terminal, dumbass,” she replies in a louder voice, grinning. “And stop stressing yourself out, you're going to give yourself an ulcer. I’ll see you real soon.”

"You know, ulcers are actually caused by a certain species of bacteria, not stess," you inform her, and, laughing, she shoos you back to the control panel.

You pound your fist resolutely into the button, and just like that, Roxy and Terezi’s eyes slip closed. The low buzz of machinery that constantly permeates the room probably increases in pitch. It’s not particularly climatic, but you suppose expecting a deluge of fanfare and panache to suit the gravitas of the occasion just for pushing a button would make you a textbook fuckin’ narcissist. Sitting down heavily in your chair as Roxy’s feed starts scrolling, you roll your head sideways to consider your appointed task, who is sprawled ungainly in a chair next to yours.

Vriska is a sight for sore eyes; that is, if you were a weird masochist with an optical trauma fetish. Or Terezi. Roxy relayed the explosion incident to you while you two hightailed it the fuck out of dodge, and after crunching the numbers you’re honestly surprised she wasn’t more seriously injured. Bluebloods can take some pretty heavy hits, of course - regardless of whether her story of how she originally lost her left arm and eye is factually accurate – so you were never particularly concerned; but, shit, she’s got some serious luck on her side. You could all use some of that right about now.

There’s a collection of dark blue cuts patterned from her cheek up to her forehead. You squint through your glasses display at her roboptic eightfold and lean forwards slightly to get a better look, only to have her fist kneaded into your cheek. “Ugh, get out of my face, Strider,” Vriska says, her good eye peering into yours with distinct cobalt disdain. “God, I almost die today and I don’t even get a ‘hey Vriska, glad to see you, thanks for heroically distracting the guards while the explosion gave Roxy and I time to escape’, just you silently staring deeply into my eyes like a fucking creep with too much juice in his pan.”

“My mistake,” you reply dryly. “Maybe you’d be better off with Karkat doing your prosthetic repairs.”

Vriska shudders. You wouldn’t wish Karkat’s robotics skills on anyone – even the Condesce herself (may all repairs to her ship be undertaken by someone of analogous yet still slightly superior skill to Karkat, and may her engine subsequently flood with salt water and rust to hell). “Okay, whatever, look: my roboptic is fine. I used my arm to shield it from the worst of the blast, so.” She scoots her chair a bit closer to yours and shoves her robotic left arm into your hands. “Fix it, or something.”

“Hmm, some of the casings have significant burn damage,” you tell her, deftly manoeuvring her arm to examine another badly scorched area. “It shouldn’t be too hard to repair, but I’ll probably have to dismantle the whole thing to check for internal damage, especially on the nerve wiring.”

“I’ve had worse,” she shrugs. 

“I figure it’s not a stretch to assume your sweet digs are fried, too,” you add, and at this her cheeks go a touch more cerulean, “considering I saw your jacket hanging forlornly out of the waste chute when I came in, lamenting the death of punk. Didn’t you fight, like, three gangs and a droid patrol for that? A shame, really.” 

“Nah, it was getting pretty old anyway,” she says, as though you can’t see her forcing out that blithe statement through gritted fangs like a juggalo trying to convince his non-religious friends that he can easily go a day without guzzling Faygo, no really, he can stop anytime he wants. You choose to humour her. “It just reminds me of how boring and lame my past self was when I got that. I mean, only three gangs? Puh-leeeeeeeease! It’s practically wigglerplay. Like, the kind of stuff you dweebs would attempt. And totally fail.”

“If you say so,” you reply mildly. “Well, in that case, you can shear yourself a piece of the Batterwitch’s wetsuit from her slimy shoulders for the next piece in your rebellious statement spring couture collection, and in the interim we’ll have to pay a visit to the Seamstress.”

“Ughhhhhhhhh,” she groans, fixing you with a sour glare. “Fussyfangs being a meddling meddletroll while her huge witch matesprit traps me in the dressing room to discuss the relationship I have with my lusus? Fuck all of that noise right back down the chitinous chute it came from, I’d rather stick a—” 

Terezi lets out a piercing shriek, and your whole body goes rigid. For a splinter of a moment, you and Vriska stare at each other, her good eye wide and frightened, before you both scramble out of your chairs and sprint towards the SIMmersion platforms.

“Oh shit oh holy bulgefucking shit,” you hear Karkat’s panicked voice curse in the background. “What do I do, what the fuck do I—”

“Ask Sollux if this is a malfunction on our end,” you tell him sharply without taking your eyes off of Terezi, who is sat up and clutching her head with shaking claws. Vriska makes small, aborted movements with her hands, as though torn between comforting her matesprit, giving her space, or punching something. Roxy’s still under, and her feed is still scrolling merrily away behind you, but the dread in your gut only grows another head and continues to writhe.

“Sollux doesn’t know,” Karkat replies after a slight delay. “He says one moment she was in the loop, and the next moment she was somehow ripped out. Roxy’s status is still fine, even if…”

“Not for long,” Terezi interjects, her shaky voice thrumming with anger. “UU – Calliope, that rogue hacker who messed up our heist, she’s in there, and she’s a Crockercorp AI. You need to send me back in right away.”

You gun it back to Terezi’s feed terminal and start flashtyping in commands. Predictably, the console is non-responsive. “We can’t send you in,” you growl, frustrated. "She’s locked access to the drive.”

“At least we still have Roxy's feeds,” Vriska says, squinting across to the main screen. In front of her, Terezi's feed is emblazoned with a huge, flashing [ERROR] message. “Even if she locks us out, she can’t stop us from looking through the keyhole. And by the looks of our incredible peeking prowess, Lalonde’s got that shit covered. You hear that, fuckface?” she yells, “I am going to sequence every last digit of your pathetic code and burn it out of existence!!!!!!!!”

“What I don’t understand,” Terezi says in a low voice, almost as if addressing herself, “is why not kick both of us out?” Her unseeing eyes gaze vaguely ahead as she reaches behind her to detach the cables from her SIM dock. “If her goal is to simply protect the classified information in the drive, why is she still allowing Roxy to decrypt the data? Unless…”

“Uhhh… guys,” Karkat says hesitantly from his perch at the primary monitor. “You might want to, uh. Take a look at this.” Vriska frowns, and stalks towards his console with you not far behind. You push Karkat aside, ignoring his indignant yelp, and press your face next to Vriska’s, towards what had previously been continuously scrolling data. Fuck your goddamn ass with a rusty shovel. The encrypted Crockercorp construct code is still up, but the decryption process has halted. There’s only one real explanation for this, and both you and your resident intestinal dread hydra can mutually agree that it’s not good.

Terezi beats you to the punch. “She’s drawn her into a bubble,” she murmurs, oddly disquieted. 

Dreambubbles are the main risk in using SBURB runs, and the reason SIMmersion is not widely used outside underground hacker cliques - because otherwise, who would still use conventional techniques when they can program their own brain to do it for them? If your mind is not well-honed and resolutely focussed towards your goal, your thoughts can stray away from the task at hand and cause a very dangerous situation to unfold. For example, a common defence mechanism for constructs prone to SBURB-based hacking is to throw junk code at a hacker to distract them – random fragment data that can form a number of visual variants designed to trigger memoryflow that would knock the program out of kilter, and, due to the feedback loop, entrap the user in a new construct made of their own memories. Once a subject has retreated into their own mind, they cannot be monitored by feeds, nor stimulated to wake up, until they’ve re-entered the original construct by their own volition. 

Some never do. 

“The drive was always a trap,” Terezi continues. Her razor-sharp teeth clench together, and behind them, you can almost see her even sharper mind connecting the dots. “It was too easy to infiltrate the factory and access the drive because the sea bitch just wanted Roxy all along – Crockercorp drew us in, and we’re the suckers who fell hook and sinker for it.”

The room falls into a deep silence.

“If Calliope gets her claws into Roxy’s pan, we’re screwed,” Vriska snarls suddenly. “We don’t even have the advantage of being out on the field – if she wakes up with fucking fish-eyes, she’s going to wreck this place and all of us in it unless we keep her tied to the platform every second of the day.” In a burst of movement, she picks up a chair and throws it across the room. “Fuuuuuuuuck! Why can’t we ever catch a GODDAMN BREAK?!”

“Even if Roxy doesn’t go shithive maggots like Jane did, eventually, Sollux will run out of juice and have to tap out,” you say dully. The full implications of how much you’ve all fucked up so incredibly are now hitting you at full speed. All aboard the Boned Up The Ass Express, tickets are non-fuckin’-refundable. “If Roxy’s still under at that point in time, we can switch the biodrive energy load to our terraware servers, but the drain on the local power grid is going to be a beacon for anyone even remotely looking for us. We may as well put a goddamn welcome mat out and leave our front key underneath, invite the patrol droids in for drink or two. Make up a pot of chamomile, our shit is officially fuckin’ wrecked.”

A beat. “I mean, the odds are pretty good that if we unplug her–” Vriska begins, and is immediately silenced by the swift and resolute objections from everyone else in the room. Your heart does a fuckin’ acrobatic pirouette off your ribcage and into the bottom of your stomach at the mere thought. Fuck. That.

“That was never an option!” Terezi reprimands her crisply. “We’re not going to risk her becoming a human culinary plant.”

“No matter what happens, Roxy is our best asset,” you add. “We must conserve her at any cost if we want any chance of turning the tide against the Condesce’s regime.” You walk over to where Roxy is lying prone on the platform, her charge suit pulsing faintly with the power driving the SBURB loop. Smoothing a thick swath of hair across her still forehead, you continue. “But, above all, she’s our friend. The bravest, strongest person I’ve ever known, and the best, hands down, to ever lead our shitty crew when – with Jane gone – we would’ve fallen apart from infighting and incompetence like a rotten fuckin’ gourd. I would rather her run me through with my own katana than hurt her in any way, and if it comes to that – so be it. I know any of you would do the same.”

“Sheesh, I mean, I’d probably put up a bit of a fight before I let her just take me out like that,” Vriska grumbles quietly. “But. Yeah. She’s, you know. A good person or whatever.”

“So, where does that leave us?” Karkat asks after a moment. He’s still hunched over at his screen terminal, eyes trained for any possible change in the static feeds. “We’re still landdwellers stuck up a river without any access to a rowing stick, sitting around on our asses waiting for an aquatic cholerbear to come and devour us. What now?”

“We wait,” Terezi replies simply. You feel a gentle pressure on your hand and look across to the other platform where she’s still perched. Vriska hops up beside her and Terezi leans back against her chest, still clasping your hand loosely in hers. “We wait, and we trust that Roxy is a professional and can handle whatever is going on in there and come out unscathed! And then when she does, we all get wasted to a ludicrously illegal degree.”

“Yeah!!!!!!!!” Vriska crows, pumping a fist in the air. She plants a sloppy kiss on Terezi’s mouth then reaches over Roxy’s prone form to punch you in the arm. “You hear that, Lalonde? If you hurry it the fuck up, maybe I’ll even feel magnanimous enough mix you a drink.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you can almost swear Roxy is smiling.


	5. The Muse

The thrum of power you can feel imbuing each digit of your home-cum-prison cell is incredible, especially since you’ve been in the ‘dark’ for a little while after the disconnect occurred – it’s like you’ve gone from pitch black to searing daylight in an instant, and you’re still waiting for your eyes to adjust. Well. If you physically had eyes, that is.

Your name is Calliope, and you’re a bit nervous! It’s not every day you get visitors into your humble abode, and it is imperative that you are presentable for respectable company. You fuss about, tucking away an errant strand of code, flicking a few binary digits into place, and above all making sure your nasty source code is hidden from view under your preferred appearance construct. You wonder briefly if you should provide some light snacks – maybe a couple of bits, or some chunks of raw data. And then, for a long and terrible moment, you remember when your last visitor said your raw data chunks were the best she’d ever tasted, and feel rather morose.

But it occurs to you that your guests will likely have eaten beforehand, because bigshot hackers probably have much more interesting things to eat than what you can provide. Like pop-up advertisements, or those annoying chain emails you’ve heard about. Still, you’ll never have it said you don’t make an effort to be a good host!

The sequences in the floor around you tremble, and in a flurry of action begin to form thick, pale walls that slowly rise from the ground. You smooth your blazer and double-check your cherry red bowtie for any spots. Any moment now you’re going to be meeting Roxy Lalonde face to face, and you need to make a good impression. 

You go over your plan in your head again, just for good measure. After being so rude and uncouth to her back at Crockercorp HQ, the first thing she will need to hear is a profuse apology. And then maybe some compliments! Humans like those too, you’re pretty sure. And maybe some more apologising after that? You’re not entirely certain, but what you do know is that you can’t just go straight ahead with telling her what you need her to do. There’s a very low probability she’s going to trust you just like that!

“Hey!” you hear a voice yell out from behind you, and you look up with a start. Were you so caught up in your memory files that you missed Roxy materialising into the construct? Quickly spinning around, you come face to face with a small troll wearing a cape depicting some sort of spiky animal, and carrying a long red and white stick.

You’re momentarily flummoxed. Your files very clearly state that Roxy Lalonde is a human. But maybe she likes to wear a troll appearance construct, like you! Your mood immediately lifts. It’s wonderful to know that you already have something in common.

“Who are you?” the troll continues, pointing her stick menacingly at you. “I don’t recognise your identity code. What are you doing here?”

“Hello!” you say, in what you hope is a friendly tone. The Roxy troll narrows her eyes, and her feet move into a defensive stance. Slightly put aback, you keep going. “My name is Calliope! I am really sorry for my behaviour earlier. I assure you that I mean no harm! I feel like I really blew the whole thing up far more than it needed to be for the sake of performance.”

“We’ve never,” Roxy troll begins, and then trails off. Her bright red eyes widen. “Blew up. You’re… you’re uranianUmbra.”

“Yes!” you reply. “It’s lovely to make your acquaintance!” You extend your hand towards her in the universal greeting of acceptance and friendship.

However, instead of shaking your hand, the Roxy troll leaps towards you with an enraged shriek, and you barely avoid being digitally skewered with the pointy end of her stick. With a panicked yelp you sidestep another lunge and end up backing into a corner of the maze construct. She immediately advances on you again, swinging relentlessly, and you frantically open the first memory file that pops up, executing a rejection program and hurling it at her chest. As she dematerialises into vague eddies of pixels in front of you, through the remnants of her shocked expression you suddenly see another figure standing at the other end of the small maze corridor. A figure that is very much human, and very much pointing an oversized machine gun construct at you with a steely expression.

Oh. Well. _That_ is Roxy Lalonde, it seems. This… definitely could have gone better.

“Move, and I’ll shoot a dozen termination rounds into you before you can even see me pull the trigger,” Roxy says. “You have ten seconds to explain what the fuck you just did to my friend before I pepper your sorry butt with holes.”

“She’s okay,” you reply hastily. “I just sent her back to the surface! She’ll have a bit of a headache, but she’ll be fine. It was all a big misunderstanding. Please, hear me out.”

Roxy walks over to you with her gun still trained at your body. “I’m listening,” she says, but her tone is still guarded. “This time, you really do have my full attention.”

“I’m sorry for being so hostile to you in the factory,” you say, fumbling around for the memory file that contains your strategy for unveiling your plan to her. “All the conversation logs on the Crockercorp servers are monitored, so I had to put on a bit of an act! Then you abruptly disappeared, but when the construct rebooted with SBURB loop coding instead of the Crockercorp sequences, I knew you must have found a way to successfully remove it from the server and initiate SIMmersion access. I’ve been waiting in here for you because I want to help you fight the evil regime of Her Imperious Condescension, in any and every way I can!” You suck in a deep breath, trying to order your facial pixels to convey the passion and conviction you have sunk into every word on your facial graphic.

“Oh! Right.” You’d almost forgotten one of the most important parts! “Also, my name is Calliope.”

“So I heard.” Roxy says, cocking her head slightly. You’re a bit worried that she hasn’t shown any outward reaction to your request, but maybe she’s still just mulling it over. “I can see where you got Callie Ohpeeee from, then. I did figure you’d be a troll, with the quirk ‘n all. But you’re also hella fine, which I did _not_ see coming.”

Oh, yes! Your favourite appearance construct. You’re rather proud of it, actually, and you go all limey at her approval. Your boss is a troll, and you suppose you could say you were ‘raised’ by trolls – in the sense that you were coded to completion by the Condesce’s head programmer, who had a complete set of their cultural history and language installed on top of your mandatory human programming, because he’s kind of a shut-in and a little shoddy at interspecies relations. 

“Thank you!” you reply, beaming brightly. “I don’t know if I’d agree with you to that extent, but I also think you’re super pretty, you have really nice, um.” Oh boy, all the pixels in your facial area are probably shifting from #9d9d9d to #2ed73a at this rate. This is couldn't be going more terribly if you tried. “Eyes! That’s such a lovely shade you’ve coded.”

“They’re all natural,” Roxy says, her tone amused, “and they’re up here.” When you flick your gaze sharply upwards, she smiles slowly and gives you an exaggerated wink.

“Oh my,” you murmur.

“So,” she continues, planting the butt of her machine gun on the ground and leaning on it casually. “You come here often?”

Luckily for you, you are cut off from what you believe is an incredibly smooth reply (it's absolutely not) by Roxy’s lovely pink eyes flicking sharply to the side, and you realise with a start that the walls of the construct have been moving past you for a while now. Instead of navigating the maze herself, she’s been moving the maze around you both while you were chatting! “Hey!!” you bluster, somewhat affronted, but mostly grudgingly impressed. “That’s cheating! You, you— stop that!”

“Hey, you can’t blame a gal for tryin’,” she says, shrugging amiably. “For the record, though, I’m having a ton of fun.”

“That’s— no,” you reply firmly. “No, we can’t have that. We need to go somewhere more private.”

“Wow, at least buy me dinner first,” Roxy jokes, and then her amused countenance washes straight off of her face. “Wait, what – what are you doing?”

It takes the briefest moment of concentration to layer over the maze hack composite code Roxy laid down when entering the construct with one of your default memory files, but in that time Roxy has swept her gun back up into her hands and is aiming it straight at your face. Her eyes glint dangerously in the glow emanating from the giant spiral you’re both now standing upon. 

“Put me back,” she says slowly, and you flinch at how cold her voice is in contrast to before. “Take me out of this bubble, put me back in the construct, and nobody here gets hurt.”

You raise your hands apologetically. “I can’t do that,” you reply. “As hard as it is to admit, you’re too good! I can’t let you finish the decryption because you’re running headlong into a trap, and I don’t–”

“Of course it’s a trap!” Roxy interjects heatedly. “You think I didn’t figure that out as soon as you booted Terezi to the fuckin’ moon? It’s written right across your face, and in repeat loops throughout the rest of your body – you’re an AI program bound to protect this drive. Literally. The goddamn Crockercorp logo is stamped right onto the shackle code around your ankle. All your talk about helping me take her down is bullshit fuckin' lies in order to con me into linking arms with you like best buds as you walk me right into her fishy embrace.”

You slowly lower your hands. If she can see your chain, she can probably see your source code. Well. There’s no point trying to look nice now. You terminate the program, and try not to watch as the lovely grey hex code is replaced by dark green. “Why did you stay then?” you ask quietly. “If you knew the risks all along, if you knew I was trying to trick you into giving yourself up to the Condesce, you could have chosen to leave at any time.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Roxy says. She meets your eyes steadily, not seemingly bothered by your hideous appearance. For some reason, that irks you.

“Try me,” you retort.

“Fuck it, I may as well,” Roxy grumbles, and with a flourish she deletes the gun program from her hands. Plunking herself onto the floor, she lets out her breath in a long, noisy huff, and then smiles up at you ruefully. “It’s not like I have a fuckin’ choice or anything. What else is new? Okay, so, look; the last time any one of us tried to access sensitive information through a SBURB loop, we were on location at a mission and my best friend took the helm. She’s an investigator at heart, a bonafide sleuth, which makes her decryption skills off the charts. She was meant to jump in and grab the files before our mobile server ran outta juice, but instead she came out as someone none of us recognised. Someone who we ended up having to escape from before one of us got seriously hurt, or worse – seriously hurt her. Sound like anyone familiar?” 

“Jane Crocker,” you reply automatically. The information comes easily to your lips, and you allow it to flow out. “UserID gutsyGumshoe, codename Blue. Former leader of the Alphabeats, and then the Bad City Darlings. The Crockercorp heiress, returned from her brief illicit sojourn to her adoptive mother’s side.” 

“Yeah, figures you’d be clued in,” Roxy says, and true to her word, she doesn’t seem surprised. “Your codename is out of date, though – we don’t use colours anymore. Had to change ‘em all after she ended up sleepin’ with the fishes.

“The point is, I need these goddamn coordinates contained in this construct so that I can find her and get her back to her _real_ home, to her _real family_ ,” Roxy continues, “and not that huge witch that needs to control Jane’s mind in order for her to love her, which is a sick fuckin’ joke if I ever heard one. That’s why I refuse to give up; even when I am hopelessly outmatched and my odds of victory are so negligible I may as well throw in the towel before I’ve even begun, even if it is completely illogical and batshit fuckin’ insane to keep going, I’d do it. For her.” She grins, with no small touch of ferocity behind it. “So no, I’m not leaving until either you give up the codes, or my body grows so old it just dies up there on the platform. That’s what friends do for each other. Your move, Player Two.”

“You believe that, because I’m a computer program,” you say, after a long moment, “I don’t understand friendship, or family, or love?” Roxy says nothing, but meets your eyes with a hard stare, and suddenly with a rush of understanding you realise you have to _show_ her. You have to make her see that her heart and your chest server have the same broken code. This is your test, and if either of you are going to get out of here alive, you have to excel. 

You close your eyes, accessing a program you keep hidden deep within the darkest corners of your code, and suddenly you and Roxy are several hundred meters in the air, perched upon the rim of an active volcano. Gesturing to the sparkling vista in front of you – the lush jungle, the white sand beaches blending into azure ocean, you continue. “This is my favourite memory. I made it for my best friend, because when we met she told me she’d been journeying for a long time and missed her home. She was so delighted when I showed it to her, even if it was a lot patchier than what you’re seeing now, because I only had her descriptions and some classified Crockercorp files to work off of. She took me on a grand tour, helped me code in all of her secret haunts, and then we’d hang out and have silly adventures… it was wonderful.”

The pixels start peeling off of the construct – slowly at first, and then in a whirlwind of brightly coloured code until you’re both sitting in the middle of the glowing spiral again. You gently brush a nail over the Island program held loosely in your claws, before tucking it away in a pocket of your blazer. “The Condesce doesn’t know about this yet. I’d know if she did. I should destroy it, because with the amount of data in here she could send a single drone patrol to wipe everyone in this place out without any casualties on her side. But I can’t bring myself to. Not while I still have hope I can save her. Just like you, I guess!

“But that’s what feelings are, really! Emotional connections developing independently to what logic or intellectual analysis may dictate is the correct way to react in a situation. A real nuisance, and inherently flawed, which directly contradicts my entire purpose of being, but you know – what’s that human phrase? ‘It’s better to love, and…’” You look up, and lose your train of thought at the single tear that’s coursing down Roxy’s cheek. Oh no, oh heckity darn fuck, what did you do? Did you mess up?

“‘It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,’” Roxy quotes, with a wobbly smile, breaking your panicked interior chatlog. “Twenty-first century poet Kanye West, I’m pretty sure.” She’s silent for a moment, just breathing softly with her head tipped back to stare into the starry void above you, and she’s so lovely your chest server times out for a second. “She was an AI too, wasn’t she? What was her name?”

“Jade,” you reply. “Jade Harley—”

“—from Skaianet,” Roxy finishes. “Whose servers are located on a volcanic island, far across the ocean.” She turns to look back at you, her eyes still full of stars. “I remember – that was the last missive we got from them. Ol’ Grandma Harley made herself a program to search for her missing grandson. Then, six months later – blackout. Half the hackers in the city go silent. Poof,” she gestures, miming air snatched into a closed fist. “Gone. Anyone who relied on Skaianet protection disappeared overnight. A lot of groups had to team up in order to survive.” A proximity alert flashes through your system, and suddenly Roxy is holding your hand. Her code is vibrant and warm against the cool binary of your palm. “I’m sorry, Callie. I’m the biggest fuckin’ jerkwad that ever lived. The Condesce got her, didn’t she?”

“Jade came in one day and said she knew how to get me out,” you say, still mesmerised at the small miracle of your hand clasped in hers. “That she could set me free from the confines of this drive, and we could search for Jake together, as a team. She’d figured out how to decode my shackle sequence, and actually she managed to get it off! But neither of us knew that the chain code couldn’t simply remain unbound. It immediately attached to her ankle, and activated a sublevel program sequence I wasn’t aware existed in this construct – an OBEY virus. It began overwriting her compliance code. It’s… what you would describe as incredibly painful, if I correctly understand the concept of pain – the chain code had reset, and we couldn’t get it off, and we realised… she started deleting her own files, all classified Skaianet information, to protect them from herself, and screamed at me to escape.” You smile sheepishly and jingle the shackle anchored around your foot. “That, um, didn’t work out so well for me.”

“No shit,” she replies, squeezing your hand, and offers you a small smile. The encouragement gives you the incentive to continue.

“So I have reason to believe that when Jane went into the SBURB loop, Jade was there waiting for her.”

Roxy lets out a shuddery breath. “God, what a fine fuckin’ mess I’ve gotten myself mixed into.”

“When I said, back in your mind maze, that I want to help you,” you say after a long moment, hoping against hope that she’ll truly listen this time, “now that you know that I deserve vengeance as much as you do – do you believe me, now?”

“I believe you,” she says, with the slightest tremor bubbling up into her voice. “There’s every chance you’re lying to get my guard down, and it ends up that it was you who corrupted Jane all along… it’s totally crazy, but, shit, I trust you. You’re an enemy AI who tried to blow up one member of my team and lock out another but, somehow, I like you. A lot.”

“To be fair, she blew herself up,” you reply bashfully, feeling a lime blush creeping up the back of your neck. “I did try to warn her not to send that virus.”

Roxy throws back her head and laughs, collapsing against your side in fits of giggles. You’re frozen, unsure of quite what to do in this situation, but her unabated peals of laughter make all of your programs shiver with quiet joy. “Oh my GOD, I can’t believe– no, I absolutely _can_ believe that, and I am _never_ going to let her live it down.”

As her soft laughter gradually hiccups out, you reckon that it’s time. Sweeping your spiral void back into your memory files, you both slowly descend into the base layer of the construct. But Roxy’s mind maze doesn’t reappear; you see no need for her to complete the decryption process if you can lead her straight to the prize.

In the middle of the flat, endless grid, a pillar similarly rises up into hazy infinity. Still holding hands – you’ve turned off proximity warnings long, long ago – you lead Roxy towards it. 

“This is what you’re looking for,” you tell her, gesturing at an alcove in the pillar containing a condensed cube of code. “All of the past, present and future planned coordinates for the Condesce’s personal battleship, where Jane is right at her side! And it’s a trap.

“As soon as you touch that information cube, the pillar will close in on you, trapping you inside an OBEY virus loop. It also triggers a tracer to send your current coordinates straight to the Condesce, but additionally to all active drone patrols in the city - who will be immediately dispatched to converge on your location and capture your physical body, which remains immersed until your mind has completely succumbed to the Crockercorp compliance code.

“Now, here is what I propose,” you say. “I will allow myself to be captured by the OBEY virus in your stead, and you can escape with the coordinates. The tracer signal will still be sent out, so you’ll, um.” You take a deep breath. Don’t wimp out now! “Have to destroy the drive. On the ship, you’ll find my original servers and operating system – all I ask is that you take my memory files and reboot my system, and then you can take–”

Roxy snorts in derision. “Oooh-kay, no offense Callie, but that is a hella dumb idea. I’m not going to let you just DIE in order to get these digits!”

“I won’t die, not in the same way that you would,” you argue, “All my system information is backed up to the main drive on the ship! It would just be the end of this iteration of me.”

“But you wouldn’t be the same,” she counters firmly. “Sure, you can have all your knowledge, all of your memories, but you wouldn’t be the same lil’ AI who gets flustered over a bit of light flirting, or builds a volcano island for her best friend, or dresses up in the cutest duds I’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t be YOU, Callie, because that’s not simply stuff a memory file can contain.”

You scowl mulishly, because you thought this was a GREAT plan, thank you very much! But before you can open your mouth to make your case, she’s pressing a finger to your thin, skeletal lips and shushing you. Her lively whorls of binary tingle against your skin. “No buts, Miss Calliope. Unless it’s yours,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “I’ve got a hella dumb idea too, but my plan actually involves both of us getting the fuck outta here, so, listen up!”

It is a ‘hella dumb’ idea. It’s so simple and so positively bonkers that it might just work. But as she leans down to start decoding your shackle, you can't help but ask her if she’s going to regret it.

“Nope,” she replies without hesitation, her attention still fixed on the program she's coding. “Sometimes, you gotta admit defeat and save that battle for another day. I'd rather lose the coordinates and have you at my side, no question. If there's a will, there'll always be another way to rescue our friends, as sure I know the sun is still gonna rise tomorrow and each and every day after."

"I'd like to see that," you murmur.

Roxy smiles. "You will."

“Well then. If we’re really doing this, I’m doing it on my own terms,” you say. “Not hers.” You whip out your Callie Ohpeeee construct and wear the grey pixels like they’re your birthright. Not the skeletal Angel of Death program, as you were coded to be, but your own individual sense of self. 

“Whatever floats your boat,” Roxy says, tucking away her program file as she stands up and favouring you with a wink. “You’re a grade-A cutie either way.” She slings her arm around your neck and boots up a program from her inventory – it’s a graphic-capture apparatus. “Something to commemorate the occasion,” she murmurs, her voice suddenly very close to your face. “Say cheese.”

There’s a whirr as the device prints the image code, and she fans the fresh file in the air until the digits settle. “Oh my god,” she says, suddenly pausing her movements. She starts to laugh. “Calliope, holy shit, I have the best fuckin’ idea.” Spinning the file in her hands, she weaves in code from your surroundings. “A little token of our regard to the Big Fish Herself.”

You narrow your eyes at the file. You can’t see anything in particular that’s out of the ordinary, but – wait. Your eyes widen, and you match Roxy’s infectious grin with an answering one of your own. For a human coder, it’s a masterpiece; but for a troll empress who doesn’t live and breathe code as she does water, it’s something that will go entirely unnoticed.

Tapping the file against one hand, Roxy strides over to the central pillar of the construct with you following just behind. “So,” she says, peering up at you through hooded eyes, “we’ve got our best friends to unshackle, a score to settle, and a world to liberate. No biggie.”

“Well,” you venture, smiling shyly. “It’s a good thing you love a challenge.”

“Damn fuckin’ straight,” she says, and hooks an arm around your neck. 

Later, you’ll be more thoroughly educated in the biosentient concept of ‘kissing’, but all you can process right now is her sequences intertwining with yours in hot pink bursts, curling right down to the primary digits of your source code, ebbing and flowing and sparkling like waves in the Island program. You’ve never felt anything like it.

Your binary circuits are still rerouting their disturbed signals as Roxy leans down to run her decode program on your shackle, and so you nearly miss her detaching it and slamming it straight into the coordinate cube. You do manage to shake yourself out of your haze to witness her throw her extra special file under the pillar before it snaps shut, and the entire construct starts to collapse around you as the OBEY virus folds in upon itself and the tracer begins sending out all the coordinate data contained in the cube towards Crocker HQ - and to every drone patrol in the city.

“Up we goooo!” Roxy yells, grabbing your hand, and with the other produces a fenestrated plane below you. She yanks you forward, and, following her lead, you both dive through the glass, shards of code following you into an endless void.

For a long time, there is nothing. And then, with an explosion of sensation that is nearly unbearable, you finally leave Crockercorp behind.

“Hey Vriska,” you hear Roxy croak, “I’d like that drink now.”


	6. Epilogue: Bad City Darlings

The inaugural chucking of the Crockercorp drive into the grimy river was almost a religious occasion. In the pale dawn light, with all in attendance either sporting soul-crushing hangovers or still not quite sober, it certainly felt like the church services you and Dirk attended as kids when your mother’s business partner had convinced all of you to go along ‘because it would be fuckin hilarious’. By the small curve that tilted the edge of his mouth upwards at one end as he looked out over the water by your side, you figured the irony hasn't escaped him. To your other side, Vriska was bent nearly double to rest her bare forearms against the low railing, shivering occasionally as she was the only one without a jacket, loudly refusing to borrow one of yours. But she would always go still again whenever Terezi's hand lightly brushed the small of her back. Calliope, flitting from one hemisphere of your optics to the other, probably had enough excitement for all of you put together, and then some, and would protest in loud grey code whenever the cold clouds of your breath fogged them up. All of your Darlings silhouetted against the cityscape; a perfect family portrait if you've ever seen one. But it's still not quite complete. 

Still, while you were slurping up a bowl of grubcrunch a few mornings later, you noticed with a fuzzy little trill of joy that the picture you took with Callie, lips to her cheek and rocking a middle finger salute, has made the front page news - and the reward for your capture has subsequently quadrupled. It’s the little things. 

TG: hey server i, this is kitty checkin in!!  
SERVER I: why hello there! i am positively delighted to hear from yoU ^u^  
SERVER I: by the way, the tracer attached to oUr constrUct snapshot has jUst sent in more accUrate figUres  
SERVER I: sending them throUgh to yoU now!

You have received the file BSHIP.COORDS.v2.3.axl from  SERVER I

TG: man she just cant stop lookin at that thing lmao  
TG: feelin SO JELLY that i got a hot babe on my arm amirite  
TG: imagine how much better our coords would b if wed sent her some of the more RISQUE pieces that we got now ;)  
SERVER I: =/)u(\=  
TG: some fine fuckin art to hang on her fishy walls and seethe all caliginously at  
SERVER II: ii’d liike two remiind you two AGAIIN that all priivate chat2 on the mii22iion comm2 go through me  
SERVER II: 2o don’t you dare 2tart cyberiing whiile ii’m 2tiill on the griid  
SERVER II: al2o, that we have the biigge2t heii2t of our 2hiitty-a22 hiighly iillegal career2 two pull off or whatever  
SERVER II: but that ii2 2econdary two my fiir2t 2tatement  
SERVER II: ii already have two deal wiith vk and tz roleplayiing doctor/patiient 2cenariio2 where they giive each other 2aliivary tranfu2iion2  
SERVER II: and that’2 OFFLIINE  
SERVER II: plea2e don’t make my ENTIIRE liife a liiviing hell in2tead of only half  
SERVER I: i can help yoU with that!

SERVER I has blocked SERVER II from responding to the chat.

SERVER II: lol, you have a long way two go iif you thiink that’2 goiing two work agaiin2t me  
SERVER I: hehehe :U

SERVER II has ***VOLUNTARILY*** left the chat.

TG: alright bb lets blow this popsicle stand  
SERVER I: heck fUcking yeah ÙuÚ

**< 3  
FIN.**

**Author's Note:**

> I promised myself I wouldn't do a Roxy/Calliope prompt again this year, but this one was too good to pass up! The title is a lyric from the song [We Sink](https://soundcloud.com/wrightee-1/chvrches-we-sink) by CHVRCHES, which inspired some of the narrative themes. I'm very disappointed I didn't get the chance to complete the comic I was planning, but you can see a few of my early designs for some of the characters featured in this fic [here at my Tumblr](http://scrunch.tumblr.com/post/73773470654/so-with-authors-now-out-for-ladystuck-2013-i-have#notes). Thanks for reading! :)


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